Students’ Thesis Writing Skills in Postgraduate Studies

Abstract. This study explored a new direction relating to research supervision. A few important students’ skills were identified and related to the needs of hybrid supervision. Specifically, this study investigated the influence of these skills during their postgraduate studies. This study employed the descriptive survey research design. A total of 191 postgraduate students from universities in Klang Valley Malaysia participated in this study. The findings revealed that postgraduate students have perceived their abilities or skills in completing their thesis or dissertation averagely shown moderate level of the overall skills (mean=3.66 over maximum value of 5.00). Among the skills, personal skills and critical reading skills are a bit higher than the other skills. These skills are emphasized in current educational direction of 21st century skills as well as a plan in Education 4.0. Hence, this study has put forward that there is room for improvement for personal skills in postgraduate study. Focusing on this personal skill, more enhancement on other skills such as reading and writing skills can be easily achieved with current technology. Since, postgraduate studies involves supervision, hence it is suggested that a system called Hybrid Supervision (HS) to be implemented. HS takes into consideration the current required conditions to enhance students’ inner factors for thesis completion. For more innovative development, it was also suggested that students need to be involved themselves in online application (Apps) for the process of postgraduate studies. Hence, the findings in this study has supported educational direction to produce individual with multiple of skills.
Keywords: Students’ Factors, Skills of Completing Postgraduate Study, Hybrid Supervision, Graduate on Time.

Introduction
Postgraduate (hereafter PG) students’ ability to complete their studies on time has become one of the main concerns of universities globally. Universities place a lot of attention on graduating on time (hereafter GOT) because it is one of the criteria for university ranking. When a student embarks on PG study, his/her aim would be to graduate on time. GOT is defined in Malaysia as completing and graduating within seven semesters, plus one year for assessments (MyRA2). However, there are many factors that contribute towards GOT. In a study conducted by Jiranek (2010), the main factors are: (1) student qualities and personal situation, (2) research facilities and resources and (3) supervisory and scholarly environment. PG students are expected to be independent workers. However, due to the lack of confidence and limited knowledge, they seek for approval from the supervisors.
This paper is part of a bigger study, a Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS), in which perceptions of PG students and supervisors were done separately with several factors for each. When PG students are asked about their perception towards their studies, tapping on the inner factors. They have different perceptions towards their PG studies. When PG supervisors were asked about their supervisees, there were also mixed answers. On the whole, the conclusion drawn from the study is that PG students felt that they need to have certain skills and would like to learn or enhance that skill while embarking on thier PG journey. This was similar to what was suggested by supervisors that PG students need more training.

It is a norm in PG supervision, students’ problems related to GOT is tackled by monitoring and providing training to the students. As such, students need to possess critical reading and writing skills. Besides this, they also need to familiarize themselves with research skills. All of these would be helpful to conduct their research not only independently, but also confidently. As they progress from one semester to another, their research skills will keep improving, regardless whether through discovery or guidance from supervisors through

In-Text Citation: (Hoon et al., 2019)
To Cite this Article: Hoon, T. S., Narayanan, G., Sidhu, G. K., Choo, L. P., Fook, C. Y., & Priyadarshini Muthukrishnan. (2019). Students’ Thesis Writing Skills in Postgraduate Studies. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(13), 514–524.

Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
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